


The Lady Beneath

by E350tb, KriegsaffeNo9



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Mind Control, Monstering Out, Original Character(s), Robots, Slime, Suspense, Transformation, Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26521915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/E350tb/pseuds/E350tb, https://archiveofourown.org/users/KriegsaffeNo9/pseuds/KriegsaffeNo9
Summary: Sadie Killer and the Suspects, plus Kiki, go to an old spooky hotel in Circletown to shoot a music video on the sly.   This turns out to be a very bad idea.  Subtle developments ensue.
Kudos: 2





	The Lady Beneath

A sharp _tink_ stirred Sadie out of her nap. To her dismay she awoke to find her face was mashed into the corner made by the intersection of her neck pillow, the seat, and the driver-side wall of the rental van. Also, she was alone, and with one look around saw that the equipment was already out of the back. She hated being left out of the de-van-ing process; the band was named after her, it felt selfish to offload the roadie work to the rest of the band. As she combed her hair in place with her fingernails, there came a sharp tap of rain on the roof. She sighed.

She pushed her umbrella through the gap in the side door and stepped out into the opening cover. The light was fading, the gray sky now mostly black with an ominous blaze of sunset-crimson against the low skyline of Circletown. Circletown was a good few hours' drive away from Beach City, but it had the atmosphere that they needed for the music video, and by "atmosphere" Sadie Killer and the Suspects meant "abandoned buildings that were both usable and minimally lethal."

They were staying at a cheap Blue Roof Inn, parked several blocks away from where they were shooting the video. As the rain built from a patter to a fusillade and hid the world behind a curtain of freezing-cold rain, she passed the time and fought the urge to double back and drive there, screw secrecy, by enjoying a flashback to when they scouted the place out.

* * *

Their future music video location had been the fifth start in the tour; the group was composed of Sadie, Buck, and Sour Cream, for it was 2/3rds Price Wings Night at Fish Stew Pizza, and also the first night Fish Stew Pizza was selling wings, so Jenny couldn't come with. The tour guide puttered the golf cart to a stop in a weed-sprouting parking lot and taken a conspicuously clean patch of asphalt to begin his spiel.

"This right here is the Five Stones Hotel," said the tour guide, a pleasant young man who was maybe a year or two older than the oldest Cool Kid. He was dressed like he was a busboy at a five-star hotel, which was a weird "dress for the job you want" thing, but he could do him. "This building was first opened in 1781. George Washington stayed here once while on vacation in his retirement. It was the highest-rated hotel in Delmarva until an admitted downturn in 1922, due to a standard-issue police raid on the basement speakeasy which resulted in a fire that gutted much of the first floor."

The man unlatched his LED flashlight and shone it at the building; in the early evening light it was plenty visible, but he drew attention to the three stories of the place, the boarded-up windows in the attic, the bright and obscene graffiti on the second-floor balcony. Sadie had no words to describe the architecture of the place besides "old," but the faux-marble columns, the finely crenulated and weather-beaten green wooden siding spoke to her of incredible age.

"Tragically, the hotel closed in 1956 following...  _ the incident _ ." He shut off the flashlight.

Buck raised his hand.

"Yes?" the tour guide said, turning the flashlight on directly in Buck's face. Good thing Buck refused to take his sunglasses off.

"What would this 'incident' be, if I may ask?'

"Why," the tour guide said, "that would be the dozen murders."

Thunder rolled in the distance after the tour guide dug his heel on a poorly-concealed pressure switch for a speaker poorly-concealed in the weeds.

"At two in the morning on July 8th, 1956, one Clair Lacey, a sporadically-published author, emerged from her bedroom with her grandfather's Bowie knife. Systematically, one at a time, she cracked open the locks of her fellow hoteliers and slew them in their sleep. None too quietly, I might add--and yet room by room, one by one, she killed every last person staying in the hotel, concluding with the hotel's manager, the sole employee present that night. She returned to her room and by all accounts stayed there until she was discovered two days later when police investigated the hotel, looking for clues for a spate of missing persons reports.

"Stricken mute, she signed a confession and was sped through the justice system at a famously brisk pace, never losing her thousand-yard stare, never speaking another word until the day of her execution, where she recited the following selection from 'Thought,' a poem by Christopher Pearse Cranch:

"'We are spirits clad in veils;

Man by man was never seen;

All our deep communing fails

To remove the shadowy screen.'"

Sadie licked her lips as she typed out her notes: "Lady does kills - weird - pretentious - no roof holes." This sounded good.

"Interesting," Buck said, adjusting his glasses. "Circletown has such colorful local history."

Sour Cream raised his hand.

"Yes, sir?" the tour guide said.

"Do you come around here a lot on Wednesdays?"

"Not at all," the tour guide said. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason," Sour Cream said.

"Ah, that's good to--gasp! What is that!" He unsubtly stepped back and onto the same pressure trigger, causing a distant peal of thunder before he adjusted his footing and hit the correct mark.

A gauzy phantom emerged from around the corner of the second story balcony, wailing eerily. It was just an old McBoo pail, draped with tissue paper, a spooky-ghost noisemaker inside and a large knife taped to its lid. It circled back around and disappeared past the corner it emerged from.

Sadie, Buck, and Sour Cream applauded.

"Is that ghost here on Wednesdays too?" Sour Cream said.

* * *

The building loomed out of the darkness and the rain at last. Five Stones was isolated from its neighbors by a thick line of trees; from inside, it would give a passing illusion of being in the middle of nowhere, if you ignored the distant sounds of traffic. The front door was propped open and a little electronic candle set on the threshold.

Sadie hiked up the three steps leading to the front porch, each slat groaning as she stepped on it. Good thing they weren't recording sound here. She picked up the candle and closed the door behind her, the musty smell of the hotel hitting her nose at last.

The foyer was lit by a large LED lantern set on the ground. The furniture cast long, radial shadows on the walls; no leaks, but there were suggestive marks of gnawing on the legs and the leather-upholstered couches. Old paintings of Delmarvan beaches and forests were caked with dust, giving the impression of being trapped behind greasy lenses. The wallpaper was Valentine pink and finely decorated, Sadie saw, with endless rows of cherry blossoms and rose petals.

She set her umbrella by the door alongside the others' and followed the sound of movement and chatter on the second floor. She pulled out her phone and turned the flashlight on--just to be careful, of course. The hallway had tacky shag carpeting that must've been a nightmare to clean--what jackass carpets a hotel in shag?

Several of the doors were open, though just a little, peeking in on rooms lost to darkness. Yeah, I've seen this horror movie, not going in any of these.

Imagined eyes bored into her back as she climbed the stairs to the second floor.

* * *

"Hey, guys," Sadie said, knocking on the outside of the cocktail lounge door. "Thanks for letting me catch some Z's, I definitely felt like walking here in the rain."

"Hey," Sour Cream said, looking up from his drum machine, "the forecast said '10% chance' for the next two hours. You were the victim of extreme bad luck."

Sour Cream, as had been established, was setting up the instruments. Not that they were going to plug anything in--he had his drum machine on batteries, some custom mode that just turned on the blinkenlights--but they had to look like they were. Had to achieve verisimilitude. Buck was nowhere to be seen, but the room wasn't as dusty as it should be and the lighting was in place, so she presumed he was out working his magic elsewhere. Jenny, of course, was taking selfies, already in her costume.

"Hey, babe," Jenny said, winking at her. "Room 208's the changing room!"

"Cool," Sadie said, walking around the cocktail lounge. Alas, there were no bottles of vintage alcohol on the shelves behind the mahogany bar, but old debatably-classy art prints broke up the cave-like wallpaper, and the furniture--shoved mostly to the side to make room for the band, leaving deep footprints and less-dusty rectangles and circles--was close enough to gothic to match their aesthetic.

Sadie took a seat on one of the leather couches--Buck had dusted it, because he was cool like that--and while it creaked ominously with age it supported her well enough. It smelled like second-hand cigar smoke. "So, what's our ETA on getting the show started?"

"Mm, maybe ten minutes or so," Sour Cream said, giving a vague wave. "Plus getting-dressed time. Buck's out with Kiki, scouting rooms and stuff for filming."

"M-hm," Sadie said. "Where's the water? I'm gonna need to hydrate real quick, then I'll get dressed, then--"

The distinctive sound of a terrified scream interrupted her.

"Jesus!" Jenny said. "That was totally unnecessary!"

"That was too high pitched to be--" Sour Cream said, right as Sadie gunned it through the door. "Oh, guess we could just follow her."

Sadie found Kiki in Room 229, not quite on the other side of the cocktail lounge. The door was open and plenty of ambient light shining through. Inside another LED lantern was placed on the room's single bed, and Kiki was pressed flat on the far wall, trembling. "Sadie?!" she said, looking at her.

"I'm here," Sadie said, subconsciously squaring up as she stepped in. "What is it?"

"We have found something truly astonishing," Buck said. He was out of sight when she stepped into the room--he was in a nook where lay the room's closet. The closet was open, and Buck was pulling out...

"Is that a fucking  _ body?! _ " Sadie stammered. The object was gray, human-shaped, cocooned in frosted plastic which was tied tighter to the figure with lengths of white silk. Oh, crap, we're gonna have to call the cops, she thought, and tried to guesstimate how fast and how well she could forge a filming permit.

"We would smell it if it was," Buck said, nonchalantly, as he said most things. He reached out and touched the body-shaped object and with a grunt moved it; it tipped over and would've knocked him right to the ground if Sadie hadn't caught him. Together, they lowered the thing to the ground.

It was articulated, moving not naturally but mechanically, stiff and more angular than a person. An articulated mannequin? A really stupidly huge action figure?

"...tell me this isn't some kind of sex doll," Sadie muttered.

"Oh thank..." Kiki said. "...uh..." She wiped sweat from her forehead. "Okay, I'm glad it's not a body? But I'm not sure that's a less creepy thing to find in an abandoned hotel."

Buck pulled out his phone and shone the flashlight through the plastic. The thing in the closet was face-down, and through the thin spots of the plastic they could see something matte gray and smooth and cast in the shape of a person's back, with subtle and loving detail. There was a joint around the end of the ribcage, another at the hips, framing an equally lovingly-detailed butt.

With some effort, Buck and Sadie turned the object over. Sadie held the plastic tight over the object's head and Buck shined the light through the plastic.

A woman's face, an expression of gentle worry cast permanently. Sculpted hair framed her head.

Sadie took a deep hissing breath. "It's like a giant metal action figure," she said. "Or, like... a robot."

She lifted the head and set it down.

"Okay," Sadie muttered, "this just got a whole lot weirder."

"You're telling me?!" Kiki said, still pressed flat against the wall.

Buck hummed. "Fascinating. Did you do the reading, Kiki?"

"What reading?"

* * *

Logically, Sadie Killer and the Suspects didn't need to go to the library. They all had access to phones or computers or both right at home. But the truth is that libraries are cool, and it's cool to patron your library whenever it's safe to do so. On that lovely next-Saturday mid-morning, our heroes were hunched around one of the wide-screen monitors at the library computer station with Sadie in the driver's seat. She scrolled down zoomed-in websites to the awe and terror of the team.

"Clair Lacey," Sadie read aloud at an acceptable volume. "Throughout the 1940s she published a lot of novellas and short stories about the World Beneath, a land of strange futuristic technology, stranger psychic powers, and strangest of all, a whole mythology's worth of monsters. Chief among these were the De-Ro..."

She paused for effect over an illustration of a monstrous humanoid with jointed arms and legs and a spray of camera-lens-like eyes.

"...the Devolution Robots, inhabitants of the World Beneath who had been captured and turned into mechanical lifeforms by the Steel Web Sisters, themselves a species of scantily-clad space babes from Venus."

She paused for effect over an illustration of a buxom space babe in a bikini-dress, a heavy-looking and pointy black crown on her head. A prominent head jewel hinted at what they were actually based on.

"Lacey insisted that her stories were not fictional, though they had been 'massaged' into more interesting narratives by her editor. He in turn insisted that Lacey's stories were more like 'aimless rambles.'"

"I could go for an aimless occult ramble," Buck said.

"That fantasy stuff is so boring," Jenny said as she browsed her phone. "Just get to the hot elves already, nobody cares about the lore."

"Lessee..." Sadie said. "Lacey's stories were initially extremely popular, with Pretty Neat Stories receiving thousands of letters from readers who claimed to have also encountered the De-Ro and S.W.S. Eventually, Harlow 'I'm So Mad' Edison put a stop to the 'Lacey Mythos' stories and returned Pretty Neat Stories to its original fictional focus: instruction manuals for yet-to-be-invented technology and stories that pretended that math is fun."

"Math is only fun in context," Sour Cream said.

All nodded, except for Jenny, who suppressed a giggle and upvoted a video of a cat trying to run away from a slice of cheese on its own back.

"And after that," Sadie said, "she just sort of existed a while, publishing rambling zines and eventually, uh, killing a bunch of people. The end."

"Fascinating," Buck said. "She is definitely getting a song on the EP."

"Agreed!" Sadie said. "So maybe we can get two music videos out of the creephouse." She signed in to her favorite chat program and started sending herself links to the websites she'd found. She lingered on a photo of Clair Lacey herself. What a sad-looking lady, she thought. And she had plenty to be sad about, trapped in her own head, haunted by paranoid-schizophrenia monsters.

Her face was prematurely aged, an image of half-lidded numbness, of exhaustion replacing feeling.

* * *

"This thing looks like Clair Lacey," Sadie said, lifting the head up and tilting it toward Kiki. Sadie grimaced and let the head drop, wiping her hands on the carpet. "It's dusty as all hell, so whoever left it here did it a long time ago."

"Oh!" Kiki said. "That's good. The creeper who made a two-ton sex doll hasn't been here in a minute. That's just fine."

Buck rose to one knee. "Kiki, if you're feeling uncomfortable, we can leave. Our collective comfort is more important than our desire to make a scary music video."

"Yeah," Sadie said. "We're only cool if you're cool." She crossed her fingers behind her thigh: please be cool, please be cool...

Kiki took a deep breath. "I... I think I'll be alright. God, though. Are we gonna tell anybody about this? I feel like the entire internet should know. Maybe post pictures on an image board so we're deniable..."

With help from Sadie, Buck hefted the doll back onto its feet and into the closet, face to the wall this time. "Out of sight, and such," Buck said, dusting his hands. Then dusting his hands off with more fervor. Then checking the sink and finding, yes, the water had been disconnected for decades. "What a day to not have my pocket hand sanitizer on me," he said, regarding his smudgy hands with despair.

"C'mon," Sadie said, tugging his sleeve. "We have a bucket of sanitizer with us. We'll be fine."

Kiki left the room last. She heard Sadie and Buck chatting on their way back to the cocktail lounge; that gave her enough courage to linger rather than bolt just behind them. She could feel the oppressive silence return to the room, just as their flashlights receding let the darkness take back its claim.

Just to be sure, she closed the door behind her, nice and quiet, and followed the bandmates back to the lounge and to light and sound and away from sex dolls and the memory of murder.

* * *

In the darkness, the silence, the stillness;

in the little room where no power had flowed for decades, where no windows stared out, where the only light at all from those occasional urbexers peeked in under the threshold;

in the closet, where no light and no sound and no life and no meaning had ventured in an age long enough to swallow a human lifetime;

a taste

o what taste

o life hot fresh vivid

sweet with sympathetic vibration

that flower of Despair blooming in their chest

_ o manna i will reach with my cold hand and take you from the ground-- _

Nobody heard, could have heard, the soft rustling of plastic.

* * *

Everyone was in costume, even Kiki, who wasn't due to get in front of the camera for a while. The Suspects were in their sharp suits, as per usual. Sadie started with her usual ghost look, but accessorized it to be more vampiric: some decent-quality costume fangs, press-on nails for the Nosferatu look, and a pair of fang-tears in the thigh of her stockings. ("Like in 'Bordello of Blood,'" she said, to nobody, because she had gently tore the holes in the stockings herself at home last night.)

Kiki was dressed in a fetching dirndl: a coral-pink blouse over the traditional white blouse, a more robustly pink apron and ribbon, and a dappled, wine-red skirt that fell to just above her ankles. Capping off her "innocent peasant girl" look was her favorite pink hairband.

She couldn't move quite as well in the skirt as in her jeans, but it did lend her movements a certain floatiness as she tried to maneuver around the band performing along to the recording of their song.

Sour Cream mimed hitting the keys on one of his synthesizers to cue the chorus, and Kiki swept back around to Sadie in time for her to make love to the camera:

"[Elizabeth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woyaKianemI), in the chasm where was my soul;

Forever young, Elizabeth

Bathory, in the castle of your death

You're still alive, Elizabeth!"

"Yeah, do it!" Kiki said, breaking out into giggles. Okay, creepy murder hotel aside, they really got into the act while the music was going, and it was too damn much fun to not get swept up in herself.

The song came to a close. Sadie twirled, laughing, and took a hard seat on the floor. "Okay, guys," she said. "That was take ten, and we are taking a break."

"Fine by me," Sour Cream said. "Who's getting the cooler?"

"I'll get it," Jenny said, setting her bass down on its stand. "Actually, wait, who wants what? I'm not dragging that thing out here, mess up the set and stuff."

"Gatorade," Sadie said, fanning herself.

"Water's fine," Buck said, leaning against the wall dramatically.

"Water," Sour Cream said, "but bring me one of the red powder mix things."

"You've been drinking the flavored water stuff?" Sadie said as Jenny left the room.

"Well, it's pre-sweetened Kool Aid," Sour Cream said, lying on the couch. "So, technically, most drinks are flavored water. Sugared, spiked..."

"Or lactated," Buck said, "in the case of our old friend milk."

Kiki took a seat next to Sadie, her skirt billowing like the rainbow parachute of school gyms past. "So, what next?" Kiki said. "More singing-the-song footage? 'Cause I wouldn't mind trading places with Buck for a while."

"Is there any room which appeals to your sense of aesthetic?" Buck said. "Or at least your sense of a lack of threatening mannequins?"

"I guess 121 is nice," Kiki said. "Do you wonder how they keep this place as intact as it is? I haven't seen a single rat or cockroach yet."

"I was thinking about that," Sadie said, "but not too hard, y'know, in case it jinxed us."

"As I recall," Buck said, "there's a public works grant that keeps the hotel from disintegrating outright due to its historical importance, but as you've noticed--"

In the midst of his medium-volume ramble, there came a thump.

"What was that?" Kiki said.

"I'll check," Buck said, walking out the door.

"Egh," Sadie said. "Hope she didn't drop anything out there."

"Jenny, you mean?" Kiki said.

"No, the robot," Sadie said, with a gentle smirk. "The plastic wrap's gotta be real slippery."

"And the drinks are gonna be all wet from the ice, too," Kiki said, smiling back. "That poor sex doll. All she wanted was a Pepsi!"

After a few minutes, neither Jenny nor Buck returned.

"Well," Sour Cream said. "This is starting to get annoying."

Sadie opened her mouth, then changed her mind. The thoughts percolating in the back of her head were a little too much to speculate about aloud, at least in front of Kiki.

"Well," Kiki said. "Should we go after them?"

"I'm of two minds on that," Sour Cream said. "How about you two go check out that room downstairs? Maybe get some footage in."

Sadie sighed. "Yeah, might as well. Still thirsty, though..."

"Would they--" Kiki caught herself. "You know, I don't need to pry."

"C'mon," Sadie said, taking Kiki by the hand and helping her off the ground. "Let's get some glamor shots in."

Room 208 was on the other side of the hallway, relative to the stairs at least. Nice old pre-fire-code building construction. That was just fine by Sadie for the sake of Kiki, if nothing else.

"Is she really..." Kiki said as they reached the stairs. She hiked up her skirt and took them one cautious step at a time. She was wearing comfortable boots, not anything with heels, but she wasn't taking any chances with a skirt this big.

"Hell if I know," Sadie said.

"But you've been with them for a while, right?" Kiki said, letting Sadie stomp past her down the steps.

"I feel like they're gauging how cool I am with stuff," Sadie said, once she hit the bottom of the stairs.

Kiki hummed as she thought. "What would you say? You know, if they, uh, invited you to do stuff."

"I'm thinking 'maybe,'" Sadie said, taking Kiki's hand as she cleared the last three steps with a hop.

"If you do..." Kiki said.

"No details, of course," Sadie said.

"Thank you."

* * *

Room 121 must've been a honeymoon suite back in the day. It was double the size of the other rooms they'd seen, the dominant color being muted reds and tarnished golds. In particular the bedsheets were a dried-blood burgundy that that contrasted beautifully with the brighter colors of Kiki's dress.

Kiki lay on the bed, hands crossed, eyes closed, as Sadie fanned out her skirt for maximum dramatics. "Here we go..." Sadie said. "Like a still shot from a vampire movie."

"Because," Kiki said, "we're making a very short one."

"Hell yeah," Sadie said. "Alright, I'm gonna try a few shots with my phone to try out the found-footage look."

Kiki nodded, and held her place on the bed. It didn't smell as faintly bad as the rest of the hotel did; she imagined that the people who paid to have this place maintained made sure that at least the fancy rooms got a turning once in a while. Still, as she felt Sadie's phone flashlight play across her body, occasionally lighting her eyelids, she found her imagination drifting not to cleaning but to whoever else had shared this bed across the decades.

She wondered, suddenly, if someone had died here, say, at the hands of a robot-fixated murderer, or a murderer-fanboy who was big into said robot-fixated murderer.

"Ohohoho!" Sadie said. "That twitch looks super creepy!"

"Good to know," Kiki said through grit teeth. "Any more pictures, Sadie?"

They heard movement not quite overhead. Footsteps.

"Guess the break is over," Sadie said.

Kiki sat up. "Finally," she said. "Man, you'd think they'd have soundproofed this place be--"

A startled cry from Sour Cream, and a thump.

"--oh," Kiki said, feeling the blood drain from her face.

"Well," Sadie said. "That's..." She looked around and grabbed a chair from the table. "Get the hell out of here. If it's nothing, I'll call you soon. If it's something... well, we'll see."

" _Ohhhh_..." Kiki muttered. Her head felt detached from her body.

Sadie snapped her fingers. "Come on, get moving! You've seen _way_ weirder shit than this!"

Kiki fumbled off the bed. Yes, Sadie, she thought, I've helped fight space monsters before, but a space monster isn't maybe a creeper who wants to--

Sadie stepped out into the hallway. "We're clear, come on. Follow me."

Kiki hiked up her skirt in one hand, took the camera with its active flashlight in the other, and ran after Sadie as she darted into the hallway.

Only now did she realize how truly dark it was in here with only the thin flashlight beam illuminating a narrow slice of corridor at a time, the faint brown-orange light at its furthest reach barely brighter than the light she imagined when she closed her eyes. Sadie looked left, right. "Shortest way..." she muttered, and ran to her right. Kiki followed, trying to keep the light steady.

The hotel had a single hallway enclosing the rooms on each floor. There were no shortcuts or emergency exits--wonderful, these hotels built before building codes were a thing. There was only one way out and it faced the stairs leading up. Kiki had time to reach the exit; she should've had time.

As they ran toward the lobby, someone appeared in Kiki's flashlight beam.

"Jenny?" Sadie said, lowering the chair and puttering to a stop. Kiki fumbled just short of hitting her. "What's going on? Are you guys okay?"

Jenny was walking strangely, leading with her left shoulder, moving with deliberate slowness and stiffness, like someone had affixed her to a frame she was struggling to move in. Her suit glinted faintly in the flashlight. Her hair. All three of her--

She had three eyes. A third was peeking out from her forehead, not neatly, but partly embedded in her hair. Her hair was like a helmet, and as she got closer the fine lines running across it became more clear.

Sadie and Kiki stared in silent terror.

"The fuck?" Sadie whispered.

"Jenny...?" Kiki said.

With a grunt she swung her right arm around.

Without her left arm dangling in front of her, it was clear that her torso was neatly divided into two segments, a chest and a stomach which was a translucent tank built around a matte black mechanical spine, the tank sloshing with green liquid. Her right bicep was a second tank of fluid, a different color, with two feed lines running through it. Below the elbow her arm was a complex-looking spraying mechanism, and it spun up as she took aim.

"Suck on this," Jenny said, her lips unmoving, her voice harsh and processed as if coming out of a cheap toy speaker.

Sadie flung the chair as Jenny fired waves of thick green slime from her arm cannon. The chair flew through the stream and smacked Kiki in the gun-arm, knocking her aim off.

_"Raaagh!_ " Sadie said, galloping across the hallway and leaping onto the staggered Jenny, knocking her onto her back. Kiki crept backwards, keeping her light on the grappling women. Sadie seized Jenny by the neck and clocked her in the cheek; the resulting crack was not metallic. "Ah, shit!" Sadie said, shaking her hand wildly; Kiki caught a flicker of blood in the faint light.

A louder crack and a rain of plaster sounded behind Kiki; she cried out and juked out of the way. Three more stomps and the floor gave way; in a rain of wood and plaster and dust fell Buck, who landed with an ominously loud thud. Kiki's light revealed the glint of metal. It was immediately obvious he wasn't human, or this was only something Buck-shaped; he looked like a life-sized Osamu Tezuka robot toy, all soft curves and thick joints, colorful patterns evocative of his Suspect outfit patterned on his mechanical body.

"Yo," he said, soft as ever. He didn't have a visible mouth and his sunglasses were a visor molded directly into his face. "Sorry for the mess, but, eh. We have a job to do."

Kiki was not the type to swear, so she simply mouthed an endless, stream-of-consciousness question with no real shape. She pressed flat against the wall as Buck marched. "Jenny," he said. "Need me to tag in?"

"I--nggh!" Jenny said, trying to aim her gun at Sadie, who had grabbed hold of the central centrifugal mechanism of the arm gun and had it pointed at the ceiling. Jenny's head she had between her thighs. "Maybe!"

"Dig this," Buck said, looking at Kiki. "It's totally kitsch. I love it."

He punched in Sadie's direction and with a puff of compressed air launched out his right hand at Sadie, a length of grappling wire unspooling as he snagged the collar of her outfit. Clamps dug into the carpet as he yanked back, pulling Sadie across the hallway. Jenny went along for the ride a few yards before breaking free.

Sadie wriggled in his grasp, kicking him between the legs and elbowing him in his articulated midsection.

"Ow," Buck said, flatly as ever. "This lacks a certain biological immediacy, but it really is spiritually disheartening."

"Just get kicked in the nads already, Jesus Christ!" Sadie said, really digging her heel into his featureless crotch.

"Hmmph." Buck jumped up through the hole he made, landing heavily somewhere on the other side.

It was just Kiki and Jenny in the hallway now.

Jenny pointed her camera at her sister as she climbed back to her feet, making a show of dusting off.

"Jenny?" Kiki whimpered. "What's going on? What's happening?"

"Ehhh, weird magic stuff," Jenny said, spinning up her arm cannon. "We got a new job now, Good Twin. Just come along with me and--"

Kiki dropped the camera and ran, top speed, past Jenny, shoving her at the wall as she ran. "Hey!" Jenny said.

Kiki raced for the sacred glow of the LED lantern. Runner's instincts took over and her thoughts detached. She'd run all up and down Beach City, for work and for herself. This place? Just a weirder place to run than normal. Just a few pumps of her legs and she was almost there. Veer left and head for--

She felt something fly between her legs, leaving a clammy kiss on her thigh as it nearly missed, and a glob of slime exploded below her. The next inevitable step of her run tangled both her legs and her dirndl's skirt and apron in gel, and she flopped onto the ground.

She pushed up, pushed forward, and found she was stuck. Her skirt was attached to her vest, which she'd tied on with that nice, pretty pink lace in the changing room. There would be no taking it off in time.

And it was academic, anyway; Jenny spun up her arm cannon, she could hear the whistling of it, and opened fire.

The slime burst out in gossamer waves, thin in the air but thick as glue as it pasted to her skin. The texture and coldness of it made her scream through firmly pursed lips, unable to do anything but wriggle and mutedly shriek as Jenny approached, hosing her down with endless amounts of glue from her boots to her shoulders.

Jenny walked around the thick puddle of ooze seeping into the carpet and knelt by Kiki. She knelt by her head, mechanical joints faintly squeaking as they held this new pose. She reached under Kiki's face--she'd pressed it into the carpet for fear of getting it on her face--and with inhuman strength pushed her facing upwards. KIki peeked as little as she could, seeing only the outline of her sister framed against the LED lantern's light.

"You know what you look like?" Jenny said, as though it were a nice, normal conversation. "There was this National Geographic thing I saw once... some kinda bug with, like, a glue gun thingey. You don't look like the goo bug, you look like the bug it glued in place."

"Jenny..." Kiki whimpered. "What's happening? What hap--"

Jenny sprayed her across the face, narrowly missing her nose. The stuff tasted like vinyl smelled. Kiki coughed and tried to sputter, though her lips were good and stuck together with a wad of goo. Jenny cackled and dribbled a low-pressure flow of ooze over Kiki's afro. "You look like an idiot."

Screaming in disgust and fury and despair, Kiki flexed her entire body, furious runner's muscles straining against the shell of glue locking her in place, and she achieved nothing, nothing but getting Jenny to double over laughing, the noise a grating crackle deep in her ears.

Jenny had enough to laugh at--eventually--and took a seat on the floor. Kiki fell limp in the puddle, her cheek and ear pressing into the slightly dry muck. "Man. I can't wait to see what She makes of you."

The capital letter was implicit.

"Hear that?" Jenny said, tilting her head. "...maybe it's more of a 'feel it.' Yeah, I'm feeling it. We've got a new member now. You'll be feeling it soon, too."

She grabbed Kiki by the sticky mess of her afro and pulled her head up, pointing it at the ceiling quite uncomfortably.

There was no sound as Sadie filtered through the ceiling. It was not a fall, but a slow, calculated descent. Her thick, powerful legs were more so rendered in steel, still clad in sheer stockings. Her ghostly cape still draped over her shoulders, concealing her new body, but her head, lulling at an angle, spoke the truth of her new form. Unlike Jenny and Buck, she had rooted doll hair that hung limp around her head.

Unlike both of them, she had an articulated mouth.

As she set down on the carpet with the soft noise of her joints finally reengaging with gravity, she sang.

"To bathe in pure, fresh blood...

She'd peasant virgins killed."

Buck landed behind them. "The band's back together," he said.

"We're not done yet," Sadie said. She did not step aside; she floated aside, her mantle hanging as if she were underwater.

Sour Cream was marching down the corridor, head down. His instruments were part of his body now, growing out of his midsection and arms; as he grew closer, a cold, eerie song filled the room, building in intensity. "Hey," he said. "Sorry, had to take a sec to compose something."

"Of course," Buck said. "This requires a maximum of dignity. What use is a revolution with no dancing, as the adaptation of the comic book said?"

The song hit a moment of unbearable tension, and Sour Cream bowed to Kiki: "Kiki Pizza, it is my distinct honor to introduce you to the Lady Beneath, Master of the De-Ro, last of the Steel Web Sisters... live, in concert."

He stepped aside... and the Lady Beneath was behind him.

She shuffled, one half-step at a time, mummified in plastic. She was breathing. She was breathing, the plastic compressing over her face, billowing out, rhythmically. She was swaying, her body above her ankles moving less like a person and more like an underwater plant... or a worm.

Kiki's terror from before paled before the instinctive, bone-deep horror she felt at the sight of this thing. Shrieking, she bucked away from the approaching thing, bands of soft glue snapping as she whipped away. Jenny simply aimed and fired, layering Kiki with ooze, tethering her to the puddle and the walls to either side. Jenny thrashed against her fresh bonds, but it was again all for nothing.

She gave up. She fell limp in the thick netting of slime and closed her eyes.

She could feel the presence of the Lady Beneath coming to a stop before her. A deathly chill radiated off of her; just being this close felt like stepping into a walk-in freezer.

All was still. She could hear the pounding rain outside again.

She opened her eyes.

Sheets of silk unfolded behind the Lady Beneath. With a tilt of her head, the sheets lashed out and wrapped around Kiki. The first was like having a bedsheet flung over her; it briefly hung over her sticky form before yanking tight around her. More sheets and striped wove around her, plling tight. Briefly, Kiki thought, Why the hell does she need me to be even less mobile?

The layers of sheet pulled taut, and the change began.

She felt it in her chest, the hammering of her heart abruptly slowing. The silk had insulated her somewhat from the chill of the Lady; now it was like the cold was radiating from her own bone marrow.

She wanted to panic, but the sensation wasn't there. She tried to breathe harder and heaver, and managed only to breathe deeper. The numbness leeched into her muscles, every one in her body flexing, going stiff. The fine hairs pricked on her skin.

The coldness took root in her head and the terror fell away, replaced with...

...acceptance.

* * *

Kiki thrashed in her cocoon. She was screaming, chanting, whimpering.

Sadie vaguely recalled having done the same in her own time in the cocoon, but by necessity, things got fuzzy. The body just did things reflexively in its last moments being made of flesh. It would be over soon enough.

Jenny, who had been first, simply nodded along, smirking internally, not that she could change her expression anymore. She could feel the desire to do so, but it was all body language now, which was kind of a pain. But life is pain, isn't it? She'd get used to it. Or she never would. Whatever. This part never got old. Kiki's back was arching now, something that signified the final stage of the change. That would be all of her back muscles replaced by new mechanisms and whatever the Lady had in mind for her twin sister getting installed as well. Jenny felt vaguely annoyed that all she got out of her new form was a glue gun... but she'd get used to it, or she never would, and either way, what the hell ever.

Buck watched, fascinated. The Lady wasn't going to stop here, he understood, so eventually this would get boring to watch. Wonder never held out for long. The mind gets jaded. Even miracles get staid after a while. That was the essence of adulthood, and the essence of the De-Ro. But then, he repeated himself.

Sour Cream sampled the noises Kiki was making. They were pretty good, she had an excellent voice, and they would make for great listening later. Maybe she was becoming a musical instrument. The thought of that made him feel very, very good.

Kiki fell limp in her cocoon.

The silk frayed, split, disintegrated. Here, at last, was Kiki, reborn.

Sadie shivered; then Sour Cream, then Buck, last Jenny, separated by brief slices of time. A hierarchy of power, established.

Kiki looked almost exactly the same. The process had cleaned her up, though her afro hung limp and disarrayed and her dress stained. Her eyes were half-lidded, her mouth not quite in a smile.

She stood up, betraying her new mechanical construction. She jerked into a standing position without moving above the waist, her legs bending in impossible ways under her tightly-clinging skirt.

Sour Cream played a few notes on his synth. "How's the new body, Kiki?"

Kiki's head fell limp against her shoulder. "...cold..." she said, after a lengthy pause. She turned on her heel, facing her back to the Lady. She pulled down the collar of her vest and blouse, revealing a little keyhole between her shoulder blades.

The Lady stepped forward. She strained, trying to free her left arm. Buck dutifully knelt by her side and produced a blade from his left thumb. He sawed through the silk ties keeping her arm trapped; she flexed it free, or at least more free, for it was still swaddled in torn plastic.

She flexed her wrist, and a little silver key fell into her palm, perfectly captured between her middle and ring fingers.

Treading through the pool of drying latex, she reached out and glided the key into Kiki's back. She rotated her hand 360 degrees, smoothly winding her up.

Kiki gasped, then purred, her movements becoming more lucid and human. "My Lady," she sighed. "Your slightest touch is pure _ecstasy_ " She stood en point, aided by the glue puddle, and pirouetted around and fell limp into Sadie's grasp.

The Lady stroked Kiki's face. Lips cast long ago opened at last, and the Lady spoke in a harsh whisper.

" _Pretty._ "


End file.
